5 Clever Places to Hide Home Valuables

Home theft is more often than not — a crime of opportunity and burglars don’t want to waste a lot of time rummaging through a home to find things to steal, which is why they tend to check obvious places first.  Knowing this information makes it a bit easier to outsmart them by hiding your valuables in not-so-obvious places, and sometimes even in plain sight.

Depending on the type of item you’re trying to protect, the best places to hide valuables are in areas that burglars are not likely to search — places that are inconvenient, messy, or uninteresting.

Here Are the Top 5:

Inside a false wall outlet. 

Make sure it’s not a live receptacle or in the way of any electrical wiring

Hollowed-out books. 

Criminals tend to be uneducated, otherwise, they wouldn’t make a living by engaging in crime. This makes books a potentially great place to stash valuables. However, if you have only one or two books on a bookshelf, this may be a telltale sign that they’re actually concealing your valuables, so make sure your library is large enough to serve as a time-consuming place to search.

A false container in the kitchen cupboard, 

under the sink, and in the bathroom, such as fake food cans and boxes, false cleaning product bottles, and personal hygiene items, and even in a heavy tub of “cat litter.”  Some false containers available on the market today actually look like false containers, so you might want to save yourself the expense and create your own.

Wrapped in plastic and aluminum foil and stored in the back of the freezer. 

This is also a good place to store documents and paper currency in case of a house fire.

Inside a house plant. 

Using the same method as for trash containers, a plant’s soil can be contained in a waterproof liner that can be lifted up to hide items underneath. Just make sure the items you’re hiding are in a waterproof container, too.

For valuables that you can’t hide or lock up, such as  TVs, laptops, and gaming consoles, make sure to insure them through your homeowner’s or renter’s insurance.  You can take precautions to password-protect and GPS-activate laptops and smartphones so that their recovery is more likely, should they be stolen.

Unless you invest in a home security system (and sometimes even if you do), it’s not possible to protect every item in your home.  In short, do what you can to make your home a difficult, inconvenient, and time-consuming target that will deter a would-be burglar.